


Modus Vivendi

by itsallwineglasses



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Crimes & Criminals, Developing Friendships, Gen, Relationship Negotiation, chronic loneliness, laying the groundwork for future Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:48:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25649791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsallwineglasses/pseuds/itsallwineglasses
Summary: Corben (a thespian who occasionally tries his hand at being a thief) is in conflict with his partner in crime, Tam (a thief who should try her hand at being a decent person more often). On their last job she manipulated him into going against his personal moral code, and he’s made up his mind that either Tam accepts the condition he lays out to make sure it never happens again, or that will be the last time he ever works with her.Neither of them realises it now, but this is the moment that sets them on the path of changing from a strictly professional partnership to being true friends.
Relationships: Corben of Riversleigh & Tam
Kudos: 1





	Modus Vivendi

**Author's Note:**

> I got to play D&D for the first time! And, naturally, came up with an overly detailed backstory for my character. Since I might not get to play him again for awhile I wanted to write something that would help me remember the most important things about his character, which ended up being a fic of a pivotal moment in his backstory: what lead to him being friends with the most important person in his life. The pacing ended up being a bit different from what I would normally want – slower because of all the segments of introspection – but I was aiming to make something that illustrated who these two people are and what their dynamic is like, so I’m pretty happy with that for this fic
> 
> Sidenote: Riversleigh is the city Corben and Tam live in

There’s a knock at the front door.

Corben ignores it. There’s only one person who knows where he lives, and she only knocks when she knows she’s not welcome.

Like now, for instance.

The knock comes again, more insistent. Corben slouches down further in his chair, frowning at the guitar in his lap that he’d been tuning.

“Nobody’s home, go away,” he shouts at the door.

Despite Corben’s rebuff, there’s a soft metallic jingle which is unmistakable to a thief’s ear as the sound of a lock being picked.

“If you really didn’t want to see me then you wouldn’t be home **,** like you weren’t the last two times I stopped by,” the intruder says as she lets herself in.

Tam pockets her lockpicks and pulls off her gloves, tossing them down on the low table between them as she drops into the chair across from Corben’s.

It’s difficult not look at her right hand, the mottled burn scars that stretch from fingertips to mid-forearm, because she rarely chooses to leave it uncovered. People who don’t know better assume she does that because she’s ashamed of the disfigurement. Corben knows that Tam does it because she relishes the shock on a person’s face when they cross her and discover – too late – exactly what they’ve pitted themself against. Anyone familiar with magic might recognise these scars as the result of an uncontrolled and particularly explosive spellsurge. The thrill’s in the surprise, as Tam puts it, so it won’t do to go wearing a clue to the feral power she doesn’t bother to leash out in the open where it might give the game away and spoil her fun.

“You’ve been so scarce since we hit Lord Malbram’s place that it almost seemed like you wanted me to keep your share of the payoff,” Tam says.

She rummages in a pocket, pulls out a cloth pouch and drops it on the table. It hits the wood with a heavy _thunk_ and the metallic clinking of a respectable number of coins sliding against each other.

It’s true enough that money’s what pushed Corben back somewhere where Tam could find him. He’s still adjusting to how saving coin is something he needs to do now… and honestly he keeps forgetting, so he hadn’t had too much put aside. His stashed funds had run dry after just shy of two weeks, and living hand to mouth had been more gruelling than the thought of being face-to-face with Tam again after what she’d pulled during their last job.

That, and he’d been getting tired of having constantly to put on a disguise all the time. Having to do it before he goes out in public hasn’t bothered him for years, but then again he doesn’t normally go out in public _every_ _day_. 

But he leaves the money on the table.

Tam’s pale eyes flick from Corben to his unaccepted payout and back.

She leans back in the chair, far too casual in the face of the tension that her sharp gaze gives away she’s picked up on. Tam’s too domineering to be much good at performing things she doesn’t actually feel. He’d offered to give her pointers on acting once. It’s not the sort of shortcoming that couldn’t be overcome with skilled instruction.

She hadn’t been receptive to the offer.

“If you’re done dealing with whatever business you had to disappear for a whole fortnight to settle,” Tam says, almost managing to not sound annoyed at that, “I’ve found another job I could use your skills for. Nothing flashy, just another robbery, but we’ll stand to get some good stuff from this one too.”

Corben squints over the sloping curve of the guitar in his lap. “Sounds great. Now let’s skip ahead to the part where you tell me whatever you’re deliberately leaving out.”

Tam frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He sits up, shucking the air of nonchalance he’d papered over the slow burning anger he’d spent the last two weeks trying to extinguish. He places the guitar on the floor next to his chair and leans forward, elbows resting on his knees.

“You know what I mean. Like with Malbram’s manor, how you told me it was unguard when it wasn’t and you _knew_ that it wouldn’t be. Tell me the part that you’re leaving out because you know I won’t approve,” he says.

“The manor _was_ unguarded,” Tam says, zeroing in on specifics to sidestep his actual point.

“‘Unguarded’ as in ‘there were no guards.’ Yeah, that technically was true. But not ‘unguarded’ as in ‘no-one will be around and so no-one will have to get hurt’ which is what I thought you meant,” Corben barrels on, needing to get his point across before Tam can get fired up and bulldoze straight over him, “and that was what you _wanted_ me to think you meant. That’s why you phrased it like that. You knew if you told me that the servants would still be there I’d insist on reworking your entry plan so we could avoid roughing anyone up. So you hid it from me, and in a way that would make me think that the misunderstanding was my own fault. I know you mislead me on purpose, Tam. I’m certain this isn’t the first time you’ve done it either.”

He’s expecting her to be angry. They’ve been working together long enough for Corben to pick up on how there aren’t many people in the circles Tam moves in capable of challenging her, and of those that can there’s even fewer who want to. People who rarely hear criticism often lack the experience to gracefully handle the exceptional times when they do.

On top of that, there’s how previous experience indicated that people get mad when you point out things they try to hide. Corben’s second governess had gone into furious denial when he’d pointed out that everything she did for him was because she was paid to, not because she cared. That argument also marked the first time she’d shouted at him, when he’d followed it up by saying that when the money stopped she’d excise herself from his life completely – but that was what ended up happening, so look who got the last laugh in that whole affair.

That’s why he’s careful to keep his posture casual and at ease, but behind the poise he’s tightly strung, ready for the furious outburst.

Too ready, because when that isn’t what happens there are several slow moments where it leaves him unable to read the change that comes over Tam’s face.

Then he leans back, uncertain, because if he had to name her expression he’d hazard almost… appraising. Like a pawnshop dealer handed an improbably lucky find.

“You seem awfully sure of that claim,” she muses, completely unapologetic.

“I’m certain.” Corben fidgets, unsure if he should reveal this, then blurts out, “I found the woman you bought the floorplan for Malbram’s manor from. She was very confident that she’d thrown in the work rosters for the servants as well as the guards.”

Tam’s eyes narrow. “I’d thought Bran knew better than go spilling information about her dealings with other people like that.” 

“To be fair, I was impersonating you at the time,” Corben says. His accompanying grin is more performed for effect than felt. He’s still on edge.

Sense says that he shouldn’t push his luck, but Tam is still stepping around the actual point and he might as well have never begun the conversation if he’s going to let her get away with that.

“Look, I’m willing to do things your way Tam, but I won’t go into anything blind. Honestly I don’t care that much if we can’t agree on a plan and just end up doing things how you want anyway. That’s not what matters here. But if you lie to me again our partnership is over,” Corben says.

Tam’s mouth tightens, the narrow line of it a slash of discontentment.

“An ultimatum, seriously? You’d walk away over a little thing like this?” She says.

Little to her, maybe. Not to him.

“Yeah. I will.”

Tam’s hands clench into fists in her lap.

Then she shrugs; it’s obviously forced, she’s pretending far more indifference than she truly feels. “Fine. I’ve got too many jobs lined up that I can’t do without you, so– Fine.”

Relief nearly drowns Corben like a fast-moving tide. He should make her swear to it, but the swell sweeps the words to do so away from him. He can’t think of anything except how this is better than he’d dare to hope for.

Corben swallows, reaching down for his guitar to disguise the need to turn away so he can master himself.

Pulling the instrument into his lap helps him feel a little more balanced as he plucks a few of its strings absently, going through the first few motions of tuning it. Tam folds her arms, her gaze too intense for him to meet just yet, so his eyes slide away from hers, dropping to the pouch of coins left sitting on the table between them.

The previous few days when he’d been rehearsing this conversation and planning for as many of the different paths it might take as he could think of, he’d been of a mind not to accept any payment for the Malbram job. Here and now, with vertigo from gratefulness swooping in his stomach, he’s too thankful to send a scornful message. 

He picks up the pouch, gently tossing and catching the small drawstring bag to hear his share jingle. It’s heavy. Tam has never short changed him for his work. He stows it away in a secure pocket sewn into the inside of his shirt.

Tam uncrosses her arms, her expression twisting in a way which looks… uncomfortable.

When he’d met Tam a year and half ago the first thing about her he’d been viscerally aware of was the unmissable sense of _Don’t fuck with me_ she exudes. A lot of it is owed to how unpleasant being pinned by her stare is; piercing and unnaturally pale, as if somehow the blue had been nearly bleached from her eyes. The way her face is always creased in some degree of belligerence helps too. Corben would need two hands to count the number of times that Tam has neutered a potential complicating factor on one of their jobs with a discouraging glare directed at an overly nosy bystander. So it’s pretty useful, usually, but right now it’s not helping what Corben is gradually realising is Tam’s attempt to look apologetic.

She drums her fingers on the arm of her chair.

“I bought a gift for you,” she says, instead bringing the conversation back to the next job she has lined up like he was expecting.

Surprised, Corben sits up from his slouch. Tam pulls out a folded square of leather, unfolding it to reveal the mottled brown bulb of a plant, tenaciously alive with an upside-down crown of white roots sprouting from the bottom and the beginnings of a green stem poking out of the top.

It’s a swamp lily, Corben knows with absolute certainty because he’s got an illustration he brings with him each time he makes the trip to the single plant nursery Riversleigh has to its name. There are no swamps in the city, so Corben’s never seen a real one. He’d like to. He’d like to travel and get to see all kinds of different places and things for himself, not just have to imagine them from the descriptions in poems and plays, but… Well. It’s not safe for him to leave Riversleigh, so he never has. Never will, probably.

“No way,” Corben breathes, “how did you find one?”

“By asking literally everyone I know and having two weeks with nothing else to do.”

Corben reaches out to take the bulb, but Tam pulls it back out of his reach.

“Do you forgive me?” Tam asks, subtly tipping the blub towards him.

He doesn’t even have to think about it.

“Yes, yes obviously, hand it over already,” he says.

Having gotten what she wanted, Tam relents. She lets Corben grab the bulb and he wastes no time hurrying over to an open and waiting glass terrarium to plant it.

The terrarium is one of dozens – they dominate his home, stacked onto wall shelves, pushed out of the way under the desk, there’s even a few on the floor at the end of his bed which he has to be mindful not to kick over when he gets up in the morning. Most of them are sealed, with healthy little ecosystems of plants thriving inside. Each one is a collection of vegetation from different biomes, microcosms of the jungle in Spissus, and the sparse shrubs that grow on Hamus Cliffs, and all other kinds of places. The mangrove has been his favourite so far, but he’s excited to be able to finally set up a swamp ecosystem.

With dirt under his fingernails and the bulb now buried alongside the previously planted seeds of other swamp plants that he’d had an easier time getting his hands on, Corben pulls a polished river stone from a draw in his desk. He pushes it into the soil in the middle of the terrarium and quickly closes the lid.

Glass warms beneath his hands as the spell woven into the stone activates. The seeds sprout, stems rising so rapidly that their tiny leaves shake as they unfurl at a rapid pace. Water creeps up from under the soil as it sweats from the enchanted stone to soak the bottom of the terrarium. By the time the glass starts to cool under Corben’s palms, the terrarium houses a miniature swamp, a thriving ecosystem where every plant has grown into a tiny version of what it would be in the wild.

Corben kneels down, his face nearly pressed up to the glass in his eager effort to see _everything_ , but that makes his breath fog up the glass, which makes Tam chuckle. He wipes away the condensation with his sleeve, and wonders if Tam likes the swamp lily. In miniature it looks terribly delicate, with thin white petals and pink stamens too small to see if you don’t know to look for them.

He can’t help thinking it’s probably too fragile for her tastes. She’d only bought it so she could give it to him.

Tam comes close enough to study the tiny swamp through the lid. Corben looks up at her through the terrarium, her face slightly blurred through two panes of glass.

“That’s done then. I suppose you’ll start a new one,” Tam says.

She’s not quite frowning, but the crease between her brows gives away how she doesn’t really understand why he makes these.

He kind of wishes that she liked the lily.

Except… No. He doesn’t.

He feels like he _should_. It would be smarter to wish that she’d put all that work into finding one because she cared either way about the plant or what he did with it. Wanting that would be much smarter than enjoying how Tam had bought the bulb because she thought it would make a good bribe for when she pushed him to forgive her already, despite the fact she’d not yet done anything at all to earn his forgiveness.

But she had been dead on the money with that bribe. That moment when she’d unwrapped it had been the most understood Corben had felt in years – it showed that Tam had known how much she’d pissed him off by deceiving him the way she had. Even better, it showed how she’d known him well enough to be able to accurately tell what he’d care about more than that.

So he doesn’t want the smart thing. What he actually wants is to feel recognised and understood like that again.

“I suppose I will,” Corben says, straightening up from the terrarium. Even if Tam only cares because she’s keeping track of her options for leverage, that’s good enough. He’ll take leveraged recognition over nothing. “Now tell me about this new job you’ve got lined up.”


End file.
